


ignorance makes the heart grow colder

by Evelyn_fireheart



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, Peter Parker is a Good Bro, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Steve Rogers is a dick, he's also sexist, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 20:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19180834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evelyn_fireheart/pseuds/Evelyn_fireheart
Summary: All Steve wanted was to go down to the gym for a midnight training session, where he could let out his anger without any of the jumpy so called New Avengers around- and the new agents, whose hands always jumped to their guns a second too soon.Instead he got an almost-confrontation with one of the agents living at the compound, who apparently goes by the name Agent Parker. Steve doesn't understand it. After all, they had all made mistakes, but the bigest of those all resided on Tony's shoulders.(so why did everyone seem to hate him?)





	ignorance makes the heart grow colder

When Steve finally makes his way to the gym, there's already someone there. Shrouded in darkness, the figure darts around the punching bag far too quickly to be human and much too small to be a member of his team. Likely another one of those agents that are so fond of wandering aimlessly around his Compound now. Still, he can't help but admire the way his feet hardly seem to touch the ground as the dim light outlines the scene in musty gold, and so pauses for a second to analyse the unknown figure.

Awe picks up a running beat in his mind as he watches the supposed agent move smooth as a striking asp, gliding through stances into graceful strikes in a way reminiscent of an assassin. Steve pretends the sharp pain that hits him in the gut for the mirror to Natasha doesn't exist, and instead clears his throat. Loudly. He doesn't flinch, doesn't even show a slight embarrassment at having someone watch him. It makes Steve wonder if he was meant to be watching this assasin. If this was meant to be another kind of threat.

_So many bits of her, in these familiar-and-yet-not halls._

He locks up the thoughts and insecurities in a box and throws them far away, deep into the desolate wasteland of his mind.

"Hey there, doing some late night training?" He says, trying to infuse his tone with a motivating cheer. Soldiers can always do with some motivation, after all, and with the skill this agent seems to have...

There must have been some pretty big nightmares keeping him up. 

With an air unusually close to irritation, the agent slows to a stop and turns to face him. "Obviously."

"Oh-um, do you need a partner, Agent?" Steve says, as kindly as possible. From the huff of laughter he gets as a response and the way some of that tension in the agent's shoulders eases he guesses he did something right. Though its hard to shake the slightly mocking tinge to the laugh, as if he knows something Steve doesn't. As if he's ignorant. As if he's _stupid_. 

Steve pushes off the misconception of rudeness as the agent politely replies, "No thank you, Mr Rogers. You have my thanks for the offer, however. I do need to vary the strengths of my opponents." 

His sly smile is lined in gold for a split second before it is once again hidden by the humid dark. Steve's left wondering if it was even there to begin with.

As he starts to walk towards him, Steve struggles to place why the figure approaching seems so familiar. There's a certain stalking gait to the way the man walk towards him, a predator approaching an unknowing prey, and Steve forces his mind to realign it with countless fighting styles and techniques he has seen over the years, trying to figure out why he looks so goddamn _familiar,_ when Steve can't even make out his figure or his face.

Before he knows it though, the agent is stood just over two feet before him and is staring at him expectantly. Huh, that's funny. The agent doesn't look so small now he's staring directly into his eyes.

Still thin, yes, but now Steve can tell he's willowy in his height, deceptive muscles underlining and bolstering wiry arms. Hell, he wouldn't be surprised if this agent was as strong as Clint, perhaps even relatively near to Steve.

Nowhere close, of course; his serum makes him unique in that, but definitely _similar_.

"Oh, it's Captain, actually. Captain America," Steve said, not letting his smile wilt. He knew it must be hard with all the misinformation going around, and it definitely wasn't this agent's fault for being caught in the crossfire. No, the blame for that lies with the much higher ups. In all honesty -now he's actually thinking about it- Steve can tell that this man probably wasn't even all that special considering what else SHIELD's got scuttling around nowadays. 

That didn't mean this agent was any less deserving of his respect, of course. He was proud to have been chosen for the serum, but he understood that there were likely others who could have deserved it (Steve Rogers doesn't discriminate). It's this thought that has Steve replying with a touch of gentleness, but also a bit more solidly, "though, if that makes you uncomfortable you may address me as Captain Rogers."

Not enough _gentleness_ to be condescending, but not so little it fails to communicate the fact that he's understanding of the other man's _lack_ of understanding. 

This time Steve is 100% sure that the agent raises an eyebrow. And as one corner of his mouth lifts into a charmingly lop-sided smirk, those dark eyes are full of some kind of mischief. "Of course, _sir_ , I shall take that into consideration. Now, you'll have to excuse me for I have somewhere to be."  _Somewhere more important,_ is what he doesn't say, though Steve can read it in the way the man's eyes flicker almost disapprovingly over him.

Then he just slides past Steve, skirting a respectful circle around him and inclining his head in a condescendingly kind nod. 

"Wait," Steve says, and the agent pauses just a step past him, though his entire body stiffens with the movement. _(restraint?)_ His eyes widen as the man's body goes loose and lanquid, a deceptively comfortable move that places any onlooker in a state of nervousness. Steve would know; it's _Natasha's_. Suddenly his blood is roaring with it, the pounding confusion of _NatashaNatashaNatasha-shetaughtyouthat-she'sherewhatdidyoudotoher-NatashaNatash-_ Steve pushes down his uncertainty and confusion and rage and forces out some semplance of normalcy, "What's your name please, Agent?"

"Why?"

"What?"

The agent's expression has shuttered, wiped clean as if he was a mere automaton. But there- a slight clench in the jaw, a jolt of fury that wrinkles the forehead underneath the tousled, damp brown hair. It speaks of emotion so strong that not even an agent -an assassin- could wipe it out.  _NatashaNatashaNatashaNatas-_ "I said, Mr Rogers, why do you wish to know?"

He glances again and this time, the shadows in the agent's eyes look like vengeance. He decides not to press the neglect of his proper title. "Because I wish to know-"  _(where is she?)_ "-who I share my home with." 

"Mr Rogers," the agent says with a smile like poison, twisted and decaying and so, _so_ deadly, "my name is none of your concern. For, if luck wins out, you'll be out of _my_ home by the end of the month."

Is that a threat? Is it? Because, all of a sudden, Steve is recalling the way the agent before him had struck like a viper given wings, pounding what he was pretty sure was one of his reinforced punching bags with the force of a goddamn hurricane and suddenly, he isn't sure what he would do if it was.

He'd fight his way out the way he always had, of course. Steve Rogers has strength and will on his side which, coupled with conviction, makes him a dangerous enemy. _Captain America_ has the power of perception on his side; a hero's visage tainted only by unrelenting certainty. But up against an agent trained by a Black Widow - _the_ Black Widow- would he win?

 No. He wouldn't. Because this agent was young, the smoothness of his being and the look of life in his eyes declared it so. But it was a species of life so old, that it held the feeling of an abandoned, overrun garden. Steve had seen child soldiers before. Their corpses were one of the most horrific things to glimpse on the battlefield, mangled and carved and yet still so innocent. Still so small, in such a large world. Looking at this agent -at the aged youth in his eyes- Steve wonders what those child soldiers look like when they grow up. He wonders if this man is the answer.

The Black Widow had been young too, when her training was finished. And mere monsters had crafted her. The agent before him fought with her lethal grace, her brilliance and her silver-slick silence. Steve found that he didn't want to know what the Black Widow had forged out of the metal of the boy before him, not when she so perfectly encapsulated disaster herself.

And he was an artist; part of him reckons he would find it beautiful in a strange way, even if he was torn apart. That scares him-no, scratch that- that _terrifies_ him.

What would Sarah Rogers say if she saw Steve now, so taken by childish fear? He imagines her beside him as he had last seen her, weak and sick and viciously perfect, in the way all mothers seem to be.

He imagines her standing next to him, a hand clasping his shoulder as she peers up at this unknown man and saying, "You would be wise, my dear, to run from this one. This is one who has the embrace of death marked upon them, and hidden talons gracing their hands." He imagines the kiss she would brush along his brow, pulling him down by his shoulders until he curled into her small frame. But that was an impossible dream. Sarah Rogers, his mother, was dead. 

He was left ~~in front of~~ behind her, a man out of time. A man stranded in the future, with thousands of impossibilities lurking around darkened corners.

"Agent Parker." The voice slithered through the open door the way a draft does in winter; leeching and relentless and yet languid in its danger. "You're needed elsewhere."

As Steve tried to blink himself out of his shock, he glanced up to find the agent already pressing forwards on silent feet. Steve's mouth fell open. Standing at the door, was Maria Hill. Director of S.W.O.R.D, the apparent replacement for S.H.I.E.L.D (though Clint had said it was just as dangerous, and twice as secretive. Apparently the snakes had learnt from their successor's mistakes).

Agent Parker finally reached the door and took the folder from Maria's outstretched hand. She gave her fellow agent a smile so gentle it sent a shockwave through Steve. He didn't even know she could smile, let alone smile like _that_. It was fond and caring, and extremely inappropriate for her position. Just as he was about to open his mouth and say so, Maria looked up suddenly and locked eyes with him. Something about the cut of her smile seemed like a threat, this time. 

"Rogers." It wasn't a greeting, and it certainly wasn't respectful. It was more like she was saying, _look what I can do now. I hold the power over you, and this time you will be the one to fall._ Steve didn't believe it one bit. He knew that things had changed since his time, but not that much. Whoever had made her Director clearly thought it would be temporary. She was too hot-headed for anything else. That threatening tone just proved that she ran with her emotions too much to be a good leader. 

Perhaps it had been Fury who made her Director. It would make sense. She was practically his daughter, and every father wants to see their daughter safe and protected. That was one thing Steve was sure would never change.

But Steve was still a good person, so he made sure to be kind and soft with her. He made his body language more open, in a way she likely wouldn't notice anyway, and made his voice calm and soothing. He even made the effort to ply his lips with a kindly grin. "Hey, Maria."

"It's Director Hill, actually," she said scathingly. "For someone so adamant about their own unearned title, you're really quite flippant about everyone else's."

"Yes, it's quite strange," the young agent said, face pulled in a pitying smile.

They didn't even give him the chance to respond before they were twirling out the room, slamming open the huge doors and leaving them to crash in their wake. Each sound of them hitting the wall sounded like the triumphant bells of a war being won, as they echoed from the other side of the trenches.

Of course, Steve would never know what that sounded like. (He had fought in secrets, a soldier only in the ways that spies are. His war had been the war for knowledge, not the war for survival.) 

 

* * *

 

Later, Steve wondered why the Director of S.W.O.R.D had come to collect a new recruit. He wouldn't figure it out. (Not the truth, anyway.)

Even the Greatest Strategic Mind of the Century couldn't be expected to understand the uncomprehensible: the impossibility of ever not loving Peter Parker.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to say that I don't mean to hurt anyone with the way I've described Steve's work in WWII. This is the only way I could think of to begin to distinguish his existence not as a Captain, but as a Private. He is basically just an experiment, as he didn't even finish training before he was shipped off to blow up Hydra bases.  
> He was the equivalent of a tank, in the fact that he was just pointed in a direction and let his enhancements do the rest.


End file.
